I don't mind if it is a print screen or export proccess of the page to jpg or even to pdf... how can it be done?
Assuming you literally want to save a screenshot of the user's desktop, this can't be done with server-side technology like ASP, since the user's desktop is not on your server (obviously).
There might be a JavaScript solution (I couldn't find one), or you can use ActiveX (Take a screenshot of a webpage with JavaScript?), which might not be a good idea if this is a public ordering system, since many users won't be able to use (or will turn off) ActiveX--I know I'm personally alarmed to see ActiveX notification these days, and that would likely change my mind about placing an order in the first place.
However, I would very much question the need to take a literal screenshot, instead of just recording the relevant data in a database or log somewhere (and then you could simulate the user's screen).
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I have a group of users that will be using a web database.
Ideally, I would like these users to view that website with some user styles of our creation (so that some of the website elements are displayed differently, like highlighting fields they need to fill out). These users are independent and remote, meaning that we can't really access their computers to do anything to set this up (like setting up Stylish for them).
I was wondering if we could somehow create a package that will display the website using such stylesheet, as if it was an application rather than a website that they visit with their browser.
The idea would be that by opening this "app" they're actually opening a dedicated browser window to this webpage where they can interact with it, can't navigate away (just no address bar), and uses this stylesheet I mentioned. Thus the "as if it was an app".
I hope I was sufficiently clear. I don't even know what this would be called (not even what tags to use), so my research has really taken me nowhere. Guidance on how to get this done will be highly appreciated. If somebody has a better idea of how to obtain a similar result, I'll be happy to experiment!!
Thanks!
Will the users be logging in through user accounts in your database?
If so, create a column in the user database which, should it return a certain value (say true for these special users and false for all else) then a different stylesheet is used.
Very newbie question, please forgive me:
I'm creating an asp.net website. I assume that when multiple people request the page each person gets a new instance of the site. However, if the site uses a .jpg image on the server and manipulates the image, does each person get an instance of the image also, or do they share the image somehow? I think I know, and that this is probably a dumb question, but I wanted to ask.
As an example: A user logs into the site, and adds times to a schedule. Depending on the schedule, a blue line is drawn on an image (grid.jpg), which depicts a daily timeline. The image is then saved as newgrid.jpg and displayed to the user. Is there a way for each user to get an instance of the image that only they can see?
A great way to generate dynamic images in ASP.NET is by using a Handler. The answer over here offers a good, simple example. In this scenario, the generated image never touches the local file system, it's just generated in memory, and returned to the client.
Well, usually the site is always the same for all users, but there are sessions created for each user with specific settings that you can set. So yes, all people will by default see the same changes (and the same content).
Is there some method to issue a screen capture(browser window content only) from the browser with javascript or a embedded flash object etc so that a full quality image of the page content be saved or printed or an alternative approach.
I have a web app (asp.net 3.5) with google maps and other ajax operations client side like a custom tile server. I have been trying to implement a way for the user to print good quality captures of the webpage.
I have used the basic Window.Print() but in both IE and FF there many artifacts within the google maps and some items such as the popped up bubble doesnt print. I have experimented with save pdf thru cutepdf(just to post an example here) and the quality thru window.print() is low too.
For example, A screenshot with FireShot addon is perfect and what I want the client to have. however that is FF only and I cant ask the clients to install addons/activex controls on their browsers.
Have a look at this download example zip file(4mb) with:
Example screen shot using FireShot
(example of what I want to achieve
thru a html/JS button with in the
page)
Firefox Window.Print() result
(cutepdf used to save as pdf)
IE Window.Print() result (cutepdf
used to save as pdf)
note in 2,3 the little bubble is not printed even when open.
For now, I have added the function on my site to go fullscreen and guide the user to take a screenshot or call the window.print() function.
I am still looking for a method to print/capture my page.
are there any flash/activex controls that I can include in my page and thru them provide a quality print mechanism?
Thanks again for all the help but I still need more. :)
Thank you in advance.
http://rapidshare.com/files/311849636/Print_examples.zip.html
You'll go to all that work only to find that a simple app like Snagit will do the job. Building a SnagIt Screen Capture Plugin
The only way to reliably provide a high-quality print version of whats on-screen in a rich web application is to use the client-side, say JavaScript, to send the server precise information about the current state (where bubbles are, etc.) and use that to generate an image that mimics the positioning. Convert that image to a PDF or what-have-you, then send to the client for download.
Google also has a Static Maps API that might give you good results. I looked into it myself once, and only didn't go with it since (at the time) there were limitations on how many points they could support in a polyline.
I don't think this is possible. It would be quite a security risk to be able to capture the user's screen through scripting (imagine bad sites capturing screen information).
No there is not, though it would come in quite handy at times for bug reporting etcetera.
You will probably get the best result by creating a separate version of the page as a PDF have that being generated. It's no quick fix by all means, but you'll get superb print quality and total control over everything. The map part will probably be a bit tricky though as you need to get the map as a bitmap on the server somehow, and if it's not in flash on the client I don't know how you'd do that.
I'm addressing a problem with an ASP .NET web application where I want to avoid using query strings to uniquely identify dynamic content. I want to index the content relative to the opened tab/window that is displaying it. Is this programmatically possible? If so, what is the compatibility of the approach across multiple browsers? Thank you for your help.
No. It's not really any different to the user opening a new browser window, or opening the calculator application to work something out, etc. It happens outside the context of your web page and, short of a browser plugin, you can't get notification of this.
No, it's not possible by "tab" (i.e., browser window instance).
The closest you'll get is to drive new page requests off of session data established in previous requests but that's really a far cry from what you're asking asking for.
I'd tell whomever is "tasking" you with this that they are a moron you can't change the fundamental communication protocols of the web.
I have an ASP.Net application which as desired feature, users would like to be able to take a screenshot. While I know this can be simulated, it would be really great to have a way to take a URL (or the current rendered page), and turn it into an image which can be stored on the server.
Is this crazy? Is there a way to do it? If so, any references?
I can tell you right now that there is no way to do it from inside the browser, nor should there be. Imagine that your page embeds GMail in an iframe. You could then steal a screenshot of the person's GMail inbox!
This could be made safe by having the browser "black out" all iframes and embeds that would violate cross-domain restrictions.
You could certainly write an extension to do this, but be aware of the security considerations outlined above.
Update: You can use a canvas utility function to get a screenshot of a page on the same origin as your code. There's even a lib to allow you to do this: http://experiments.hertzen.com/jsfeedback/
You can find other possible answers here: Using HTML5/Canvas/JavaScript to take screenshots
Browsershots has an XML-RPC interface and available source code (in Python).
I used the free assembly UrlScreenshot.dll which you can download here.
Works nicely!
There is also WebSiteScreenShot but it's not free.
You could try a browser plugin like IE7 Pro for Internet Explorer which allows you to save a screenshot of the current site to a file on disk. I'm sure there is a comparable plugin for FireFox out there as well.
If you want to do something like you described. You need to call an external process that prints the IE output as described here.
Why don't you take another approach?
If you have the need that users can view the same content over again, then it sounds like that is a business requirement for your application, and so you should be building it into your application.
Structure the URL so that when the same user (assuming you have sessions and the application shows different things to different users) visits the same URL, they always see same thing. They can then bookmark the URL locally, or you can even have an application feature that saves it in a user profile.
Part of this would mean making "clean urls", eg, site.com/view/whatever-information-needed-here.
If you are doing time-based data, where it changes as it gets older, there are probably a couple possible approaches.
If your data is not changing on a regular basis, then you could make the "current" page always, eg, site.com/view/2008-10-20 (add hour/minute/second as appropriate).
If it is refreshing, and/or updating more regularly, have the "current" page as site.com/view .. but allow specifying the exact time afterwards. In this case, you'd have to have a "link to this page" type function, which would link to the permanent URL with the full date/time. Look to google maps for inspiration here-- if you scroll across a map, you can always click "link to here" and it will provide a link that includes the GPS coordinates, objects on the map, etc. In that case it's not a very friendly url but it does work quite well. :)